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LILIES 

OF ETERNAL PEACE 

BY 

LILIAN WHITING 

AUTHOR OF "THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL" 




NEW YORK 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
PUBLISHERS 



COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
PUBLISHED, APRIL, 1908 



*T1 
Mi 



LlbHARY of GUN(if.£SS. 

APR 4 1*08 




D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON 



TO 

CONSTANTLY A. ELLICOTT 

WHO SHARED ALL THE BEAUTIFUL LIFE AND 
LOVE AND NOBLE PURPOSES AND UPLIFTING 
WORK OF HER HUSBAND THE LORD BISHOP OF 
GLOUCESTER WHOSE INFLUENCE FROM THE 
"LIFE MORE ABUNDANT" ON WHICH HE HAS 
ENTERED STILL ENFOLDS HER WITH ITS RADI- 
ANT POWER THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED 
WITH THE DEVOTION OF 

LILIAN WHITING 

Rome, Italy 
Mid-Winter Days, 1908 



Now thy world is understood, 
Now the long, long wonder ends 
Yet ye weep, my erring friends, 
While the ma?i whom ye call "dead" 
In unspoken bliss, instead, 
Lives and loves you : . . . 



But in light ye cannot see 
Of unfulfilled felicity, 
In enlarging Paradise 
Lives a life that never dies. 

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD 

i" am come that they might have life, and that they might have 
it more abundantly. 

Let us import new values of power and blessing from the unseen 
world of realities. REV. DR. CHARLES GORDON AMES 

Is to-day nothing P Is the beginningless past nothing? If the future 
is nothing, they are just as surely nothing 



. . . There is nothing but immortality ! That the exquisite scheme 
is for it! And identity is for it I and life and materials are alto- 
gether for it I walt whitman in u To Think of Time" 

With what body do they come ? . . . It is sown a natural body ; it 
is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is 
a spiritual body. . . . It is sown in dishonour it is raised in glory. 
It is sown in weakness ; it is raised in power. . . . Therefore, be 
ye steadfast, immoveable, always aboundi?ig in the work of the 
Lord, inasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the 

Lord. I CORINTHIANS, XV. 35, 43, 44, 58 



LILIES OF ETERNAL PEACE 



I muse on joy that will not cease 9 
Pure spaces clothed in living beams y 

Pure lilies of eternal peace 

Whose odors haunt my dreams. TENNYSON 

Peace I leave with you, my peace I giue unto you not as the 
world gi-ueth, glue I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, 
neither let it be afraid. ST. John, xiv. 27. 

THAT interlude when the one who is 
nearest and most beloved has gone 
on into the "life more abundant" is, 
when seen aright, a beautiful period, full 
of divine uplifting, and it may even be per- 
vaded by joy and by that peace which pass- 
eth understanding. Does it seem impos- 
sible to think of joy in any relation to a 
period which is to us all a time that seems 
so steeped in sadness that one even won- 
ders that life can go on at all? Almost 
universally it is the time when one turns 
away from sunshine and light and bloom ; 
a time when all that makes for the beauty 
and gladness of life thrills with pain every 
nerve and fibre. To think of the possibility 
of joy without the most profound realiza- 

c 1 ] 



lilies of tion of the loss and the sadness, without 
peace AL ^ e most ten der sympathy for what seems 
an utter effacement of even a hope in the 
future, would be unendurable. The hus- 
band or wife to whom all the years to come 
seem blank and meaningless ; the parent 
bereft of the child in w 7 hose opening life 
was centred all the noble significance of 
achievement and exquisite experiences; 
the child left desolate without the parent ; 
the friend from whom the one who gave 
that one supreme gift and grace of life, 
sympathetic companionship, has been ta- 
ken — -in all these sweet relations of our 
human life comes this event we call death. 
Its sorrow is universal. Its desolation and 
undoing make the experience common to 
all. 

The assumption that this grief is to be 
approached lightly is outside the pale of 
humanity, — not to say comprehension and 
sympathy ; but just because the sorrow is 
so entirely a part of every life, sooner or 
later, may we not hold sweet communion 
regarding it in the larger sense and more 
profound realization of the divine love? 

c ^ ] 



ETERNAL 
PEACE 



And is not one of the first and the chief lilies of 
consolations, the fa6l that this grief, how- 
ever intense in its pain, is, even at the 
worst, only a temporary one; that re- 
union is only a question of time, and that 
" where Christ brings His cross He brings 
His presence that in infinite sorrow one 
comes so near the Infinite Love? Even if 
it were true that between the Seen and 
the Unseen there is an impenetrable bar- 
rier ; if it were true that thought and love 
were inexorably limited so that they might 
not meet in the realm of spirit, — even 
then the sorrow would not be hopeless, 
for the present life has its definite limit. 
We know that, humanly speaking, some- 
time within a hundred years from our en- 
tering into the physical world we shall 
pass out of it. Even were life in this phy- 
sical environment exclusively restricted 
to the physical limit, we must realize that 
it is full of significance, of dignity, of op- 
portunity. It is a period rich in privileges. 
So, if one could for a moment imagine 
an absolute and impassable barrier be- 
tween the two conditions of life in the 

C 3 ] 



J 



Seen and in the Unseen ; one which made 
impossible any communion of spirit to 
spirit, whether in or out of the body, — 
even then life would have its duties, its 
dignities, its hopes, its convictions. Even 
then it would have that one supreme re- 
liance — faith in God; and with that, life 
is rich, no matter how desolate of all other 
blessings it may be. For supremely above 
all mortal change, or loss, or disaster, rises 
the rich assurance of the Eternal Good- 
ness ; the infinite and tender love of Jesus, 
the Christ ; the overwhelming reality and 
importance of the Christian life. The 
deepest experience must always lift the 
soul to God with renewed consecration. 
Faith in God and immortality is our rich- 
est heritage. 

The reunion, however, is one of the 
eternal truths. Every man know r s that 
there is a rather definite limit of time be- 
yond which he cannot reasonably expe6l 
to remain in the physical world; so in- 
stead of regarding this interlude only as a 
period of gloom, of sadness, — of enforced 
heroic endurance, even at the best, — shall 
C 4 ] 



he not recognize the heavenly radiance lilies of 
that shines through, and find in it a mar- peace AL 
vellous uplifting to undreamed-of joy and 
peace ? The process of change which we 
call death is not an evil. Nothing disas- 
trous has occurred to the friend who has 
gone from the physical into the ethereal 
realm. 

It is often stated that "the soul ex- 
ists as a real entity independent of the 
body/' but this phrasing is not quite clear. 
As well say that mental processes exist 
independently of one's clothing. So they 
do, but this is only a fragment of the 
truth. The mental processes are included 
in the man himself whose existence is 
apart from his apparel. It is the spiritual 
man, with his soul and his mind, — his spi- 
ritual and intellectual faculties, — that ex- 
ists independently of the physical form. 
Externally, the spirit-body, or the body of 
the spiritual man, corresponds to the phy- 
sical body.Or,rather,as the spiritual body 
is the real, the fundamental, it should be 
said that the physical body corresponds 
to the spiritual. "There is a natural body, 

c * n 



and there is a spiritual body/' says St. 
Paul. He does not phrase this as in the 
future but in the present tense. Primarily 
we are all, here and now, spiritual beings, 
and the spiritual body is clothed upon 
with the physical body, in order that man 
may come into relations of activity with 
the physical world. The present body is 
his instrument. It is the temple, the dwell- 
ing-place, of the spiritual man. Death is 
that change of condition that deprives him 
of the means of relations with the phy- 
sical and enables him to come into re- 
lations with the ethereal forces of the 
ethereal realm which interpenetrates that 
realm in which we live. This ethereal 
world is that of higher potencies. It is the 
theatre of more intense and subtle energy. 
The entrance on its experiences is simply 
a step in evolutionary progress. "Death 
is not the end of life/' well said Bishop 
Phillips Brooks; "it is one event in life." 
It is the release to a higher and more 
significant phase of activities. It is the en- 
tering on more effective conditions. 
" No work begun shall ever pause for 

c e : 



death/' said Robert Browning: for work lilies of 
is in thought and purpose and will, and 
these powers are of the spiritual man and 
are not affected by the liberation from 
the physical body. Monsignor Vaughan, 
one of the great Catholic prelates of 
Rome, preaching a series of discourses in 
the Eternal City during the Lenten sea- 
son of 1907, — sermons so marvellous in 
their spiritual uplift that they w r ere heard 
with the deepest interest by Protestant and 
Catholic alike, — Monsignor Vaughan, 
discussing the life after death, empha- 
sized the fa6l that the physical body is a 
clog to the spiritual man and fetters and 
hinders the powers after they reach a 
certain degree of development; therefore 
it must be cast off. " Wherever the soul 
would travel, it can go in the spiritual, 
or the ethereal body/' he pointed out; 
"but the physical body clogs and re- 
strains it." 

To comprehend the true motive of life, 
in its infinite completeness, a man must 
realize himself as a spiritual being, tem- 
porarily in relations with a physical world 

[ 7 3 



lilies of from which he emerges to the ethereal 
peace AL wor ld in which he dwells, his ethereal 
body corresponding with the new envi- 
ronment as his physical body corre- 
sponded with the environment here. This 
is the rationale of the change we call 
death, — no evil, no calamity, but a step 
onward in the vast evolution of progress. 
When the religion of spirituality inter- 
prets to us this change, humanity will 
come to recognize it as a sacred festival 
rather than as an occasion of mourning 
and gloom. The mission of Jesus on earth 
was to bring life and immortality to light ; 
to teach man that death was no terror, 
but the transition, instead, into the next 
higher state of existence. Now as man is, 
here and now, a spiritual being, as the 
spiritual body has the same sight, hear- 
ing, and all organs of perception and com- 
munication and recognition of presence 
and companionship that the physical body 
in a cruder form has, by means of the 
senses, there seems to be every logical 
and scientific reason to believe that this 
spiritual being, while still clothed upon by 

[ 8 ] 



the physical body, may recognize and lilies of 
hold communion with the spiritual being p^^ AL 
who has withdrawn from his physical 
body. 

This experience is in no sense phe- 
nomenal ; it is simply a part of the nor- 
mal and orderly development of the life 
of the spirit. The spiritual and the physi- 
cal realms interpenetrate and are in the 
most intimate relations. In fa6f, life it- 
self is one; the change we call death does 
not break the continuity. The "other 
life" and the "other world/' as we are 
accustomed to say, bear to this life and 
this w r orld the same relation in evolution- 
ary progress that the life of childhood 
bears to that of manhood. In infancy, 
childhood, or maturity he is the same in- 
dividual, only at different stages of devel- 
opment. And, as a matter of fa6l, hu- 
manity constantly lives in two worlds to 
a greater or less degree, because the spi- 
ritual man is always an inhabitant of the 
spiritual world, w'hile the physical man is 
tethered to the physical world. 

It is far from true to regard the twen- 

C 9 1 



lilies of tieth century as a materialistic age. On 

peace AL t ^ le contrar y> lt ls the most idealistic, 
practically idealistic, that has ever been 
known. Science discerns the forces in the 
unseen and harnesses them into daily use. 
There is, too, an all-pervading conscious- 
ness of the larger life and the perpetual 
advance from the age of faith to the age 
of love and of knowledge. The only evi- 
dences of spirituality of life — its highest 
points — are love to God and love to man ; 
and truly, if man love not his brother 
whom he hath seen, how can he love 
God whom he hath not seen ? When the 
Bishop of London visited this country in 
the autumn of 1907 he preached an ever 
memorable discourse in Cambridge in 
which he emphasized three simple truths: 
"God loves me; God needs me; human- 
ity needs me/' Surely these are a golden 
trio that may well serve as the basis, the 
enduring foundation of life, on which to 
build up the superstructure of sympa- 
thetic aid and all noble achievement. Sci- 
ence is penetrating into the nature of the 
universe and surprising the secrets of 

c 10 : 



creation. Shall science not also penetrate lilies of 
into the secrets of the very nature and p^^ AL 
purposes of life? "Our desire to live for- 
ever is helped by finding it worth while to 
live here/' says Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon 
Ames ; " and our confidence that we shall 
live forever is strengthened by our ac- 
quiring a kind of life that seems fit to last/' 
Again we find Dr. Ames saying : " What, 
then, is the spiritual world? It includes 
this state of things where we live in bo- 
dies; it includes also any other possible 
state in which we can ever live at all ; it 
includes all the low conditions, or hells 
of darkness and evil into which we may 
sink; and all the heavens, or glories of 
light and goodness into which we may 
rise. In short, it includes all beings who 
are subject to moral law, who are capa- 
ble of moral conduct, or who share to any 
degree the quality of rational being. The 
spiritual world is that order to which man 
belongs by virtue of his reason and con- 
science ; it is that whole family of beings 
who share the Spirit of God/' 

If, then, by virtue of reason and con- 

C » 3 



lilies of science we belong to the spiritual world, 
peace AL lt ls our res P ons ibility as well as our priv- 
ilege to live in it now and here. And 
what is the life of the spirit? It is joy and 
peace. Out of its atmosphere must be 
ruled all fret and worry and anxiety. 
There is always need of wise forethought 
and due reference to the demands of the 
future. But these have nothing in com- 
mon with mere anxieties and worries 
which are disintegrating and fret away 
all the pure gold of life. Worry is simply 
lack of faith in God. " For your heavenly 
Father knoweth what things ye have need 
of before ye ask Him/' Only in peace of 
spirit can any true achievement be won. 

Man is placed here for the perfecting 
of his spiritual nature. All social reforms, 
all national activities, all intellectual pro- 
gress, are but agencies devoted to further- 
ing better conditions of living. It is most 
impressive to realize how social reforms 
are brought about by evolutionary pro- 
gress in the natural world. For instance, 
take the tenement-house problem: during 
the nineteenth century — perhaps before 

r 12 j 



— it increasingly impressed humanitari- lilii 
ans. Reformers and philanthropists dis- peace AL 
cussed the question; " model" tenements 
were exhibited at all kinds of expositions 
and economic gatherings, but one of the 
chief difficulties that confronted the hu- 
manitarian was the nature of the tenants 
themselves. They might be bodily trans- 
ferred to the " model" tenement, but there 
was no known necromancy to transform 
them into "model" tenants. A bathtub 
appealed to them as an excellent and 
admirably convenient receptacle for the 
coal or for the potatoes ; and other con- 
veniences of polite life were equally de- 
graded from their normal usefulness. But 
at the very zenith of the perplexities that 
thus sprang up, hydra-headed, to con- 
front the reformer, a new means opened 
of which he had never dreamed and 
which was destined to achieve within five 
years more than he, with all his social- 
economic genius, had been able to achieve 
in a century. And that device was the 
eleftric trolley. The problem of how to 
utilize the crowded space of great cities 

C is 2 



lilies of was swept away as easily as a cobweb, 

peace AL anc * * n a wa y un dreamed of the problem 
was solved. The trolley car annihilated 
distance ; a five-cent fare made it as easy 
to live three, five, ten miles outside the 
crowded limits as to live within them. All 
along the route of the trolley lines cheaper 
orders of apartment houses sprang up, 
and the workman found himself under 
new conditions, absolutely. Space and air 
and sunshine and a glimpse of green grass 
and waving trees a6led upon him far more 
powerfully than all the exhortations of 
the reformers. Natural forces stimulated 
him to better ideals of cleanliness, order, 
and all that makes for right living. The 
public schools influenced the children and 
they brought home to the family life con- 
stantly growing, better ideas, habits, and 
purposes. This one instance is typical of 
the manner in which the general progress 
of society, by a species of natural evo- 
lution, is carried on. Emerson has said: 
"Our painful labors are unnecessary; 
there is a better way/' 

The world civilization is now project- 
C 14 ] 



ing itself into the realm of the ethereal lilies of 
forces. Man has harnessed the lightning; peace AI 
he is compelling the vibrations of the ether 
to carry his messages; he will compel 
the currents of the air to be his high- 
way of travel. In a paper on " Science — 
1857-1907/' contributed by President 
Pritchett of the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology, to the November "At- 
lantic/' Dr. Pritchett says of the power 
of the sun: 

" There is one source to which allminds 
revert when this question is mentioned, a 
source most promising and yet one which 
has so far eluded the investigator. The sun 
on a clear day delivers upon each square 
yard of the earth's surface the equiva- 
lent of approximately two-horse power of 
mechanical energy working continuously. 
If even a fraction of this power could be 
transformed into mechanical or eleftri- 
cal energy and stored, it would do the 
world's work. Here is power delivered 
at our very doors without cost. How to 
store the energy so generously furnished 
and keep it on tap for future use is the 

c 15 ] 



lilies of problem. That the next half-century will 
peace AL see some solution thereof, either chemi- 
cal or otherwise, seems likely/' 

Scientists have discovered that in every 
square inch of the ether is locked up in- 
calculable power: energy for light, heat, 
and motor power. It is only a question of 
time as to when the liberator of these will 
appear, — the genius and diviner of na- 
ture's secrets who will do in this respe6l 
that which Marconi has done for the 
transmission of intelligence through space. 
For everything, indeed, is being forced 
to yield up its secrets. What chance has 
Mars to longer conceal its physical fea- 
tures, its inhabitants and their (appar- 
ently) stupendous engineering achieve- 
ments, with the telescope of Professor 
Percival Lowell and other American as- 
tronomers levelled upon it? 

Having conquered the kingdom of the 
earth by lightning-express trains and mo- 
tor cars ; having conquered the kingdom 
of the sea by five-day steamers ; we are 
now about to conquer the kingdom of the 
air by the aerocar, and in Boston has 

C is 2 



been organized the first aero club of New lilies of 
England. The movement is led by Mr. 
Charles J. Glidden, a famous motor-car 
tourist, who, in 1902, motored around the 
world. Mr. Glidden prophesies that aerial 
transit over the ocean in some sixty hours 
awaits us in the near future. He says: 
"The next thing we shall have is cross- 
Atlantic trips by balloon. An elevation of 
three miles would bring you to a wind 
moving, say, fifty miles an hour, and with 
the aid of that you would make the trip 
to Europe in about sixty hours. Long dis- 
tances on land by balloon are already 
common. Only the other day an aeronaut 
travelled five hundred miles from Phila- 
delphia toBelchertown. In the recent con- 
test, the Pommern could easily have 
gone four hundred miles further. Why 
should n't such trips be made across the 
Atlantic as well as over land?" 

Even the wonderful advance of inter- 
national peace is believed to be near 
because promoted by aerial navigation. 
Admiral Chester outlines the use of the 
airship in preventing attack from sub- 



lilies of marines. From the elevation in the air the 
peace movements of all submarine attacks may 
be detected. 

All these phases of progress are ad- 
vances into the conquest of the higher 
realm and finer conditions. Sir Oliver 
Lodge has recently said: "If there is 
any obje6l worthy the patient and con- 
tinued attention of humanity, it is surely 
these great and pressing problems of 
whence, what, and whither that have oc- 
cupied the attention of prophet and phi- 
losopher since time was. The discovery of 
a new star, or of a marking on Mars, or 
of a new element, or of a new extin6l 
animal or plant, is interesting ; surely the 
discovery of a new human faculty is in- 
teresting, too. The discovery of telepa- 
thy has laid the way open to the discov- 
ery of much more. Our aim is nothing 
less than the investigation and better com- 
prehension of human faculty, human per- 
sonality, and human destiny/' 

For it is possible that human destiny 
shall all be increasingly comprehended. 
Man belongs to the divine world. He is 

C 18 ] 



created to be in touch with divine forces, lilies of 
He holds the most close and intimate re- peace AL 
lation to God. He is a partaker of divine 
mysteries. God is his father. The world 
of God is his home. As he leaves this 
phase of life, he enters on the succeeding 
one. He carries with him the sum of his 
achievements here. Death is but the open- 
ing of a door through which the man 
passes into the next room ; or, rather, it 
is the waving of a curtain, behind which 
one enters, but which is always waver- 
ing and never a fixed barrier. The con- 
tinuity of life renders this change per- 
fectly natural. There is nothing startling 
in the new experience. It is the natural 
sequence and outgrowth of the old, as 
youth is the sequence of childhood, and 
maturity of youth. It is not the superna- 
tural, the phenomenal, but the natural, the 
recognizable life, only more highly de- 
veloped in spirituality. 

Nor must we fall into the error of re- 
garding spirituality of life as either an 
unattainable, or as a merely transcenden- 
tal quality, unrelated and unrelatable to 

c 19 : 



lilies of the world in which we now live. Spiritu- 
al ace AL a ^ty * s ^ e resu ^ °f ^ e perfecting and 
the blending of the intellectual and the 
moral life, — the inflorescence of this com- 
bined development. It includes all the 
essential virtues, only that it transcends 
them. There is no spiritualization of life 
possible that is not based on honesty, 
truth, courtesy, and honor. 

" We need the lower life to stand upon 
In order to reach up into that higher." 

Spirituality is eternal peace ; it is poise and 
serenity and joy and love ; it is no mere 
state of ecstasy attained through fantas- 
tic methods, but the legitimate sequence 
of the life that holds fast to the fun- 
damental virtues. Spirituality of life is an 
achievement as well as a gift. It is not a 
mere negation, a sentimental attitude that 
ignores and eludes all the just claims of 
the great realities of human existence, 
but it is intellectual and moral energy 
raised to the highest degree ; it is an ab- 
solute persistence in well-doing ; it is jus- 
tice and gentleness ; it is consideration and 
good judgment and discriminating ap- 



preciation and love. Spirituality of life is, lilies of 
indeed, life raised to the highest power. pe^ce AL 
It is no affair of necromancy and of the 
soothsayers. It is a matter between God 
and one's own soul. It is in response, not 
in evasion; it is in meeting and in ful- 
filling every legitimate duty, not in los- 
ing hold on the a6lualities of life in some 
dim trance or dream. 

The lilies of eternal peace are not, 
then, to be gathered in the gardens of 
pleasure or of meaningless dallying ; they 
grow on the highway of noble effort and 
lofty achievement. But it is not to be 
taken for granted that this highway is ex- 
clusively that of burning ploughshares, or 
of stones or thorns. On the contrary it is 
the thoroughfare of " the great thoughts 
of space and eternity/' It is not without 
profound significance that St. Paul closes 
his wonderful explanation of the mystery 
of death in the fifteenth chapter of First 
Corinthians, by the counsel to be " stead- 
fast, immoveable ; " to be " always abound- 
ing in the work of the Lord; "and to realize 
that the labor "is not in vain/' For death 

C " ] 



lilies of and life are indissolubly linked. Immor- 
peace AL ta ^ty itself is an achievement as well as 
a gift. If we are immortal, let us be im- 
mortal now. Immortality is not condi- 
tioned by time. It is not a period chrono- 
logically dependent, but it is a quality of 
the soul, a quality of life; it is the real 
significance of the present moment ; it is 
the daily, the perpetual experience of 
"abounding in the work of the Lord." 
As life deepens, with every succeeding 
day, in beauty and in meaning, in abso- 
lute trust in God and in love to all, it 
becomes increasingly immortal. This is 
the life of the spirit, and what power can 
death hold over spiritual qualities? In a 
sense we conquer the territory of im- 
mortality. 

To one from whom the beloved has 
vanished into the ethereal realm comes 
the morning awakening when, from the 
sleep in which, perchance, that sweetest 
companionship seemed present, one con- 
fronts the desolate, empty day, and real- 
izes, anew, that sorrow and loss for which 
there is neither speech nor language. This 

[ 22 3 



one day confronts him as unending and un- lilies of 
endurable ; and then he remembers all the 
days of all the years that may be his on 
earth before he, too, can pass the golden 
portals. It is our common experience, and 
what word, what hope, what help, can 
avail? Yet, yet there is hope and com- 
fort. It is tender and near and all-embra- 
cing. The " expansion of religion/'as Rev. 
Dr. E. Winchester Donald, the late be- 
loved re6lor of Trinity Church in Boston, 
so felicitously phrased it, includes further 
discoveries of the real nature of man and 
his relations to the larger life. "The sole 
condition of the personal possession of re- 
ligion/' said Dr. Donald, "is sensitive- 
ness and responsiveness to the divine/' It 
is in the natural relations under the divine 
laws that spirit shall respond to spirit, 
flashing its signals of recognition in a man- 
ner that transcends the physical organs 
and physical contact. If the beloved who 
has gone on into "the life more abun- 
dant" is a spiritual being, so, too, is the 
one still left on earth ; somewhat clogged 
and imprisoned, it is true, by his physical 
C 23 J 



lilies of body, but capable of using his spiritual 
peace AL f acu lti es - He may perceive what he can- 
not see; he may catch, in spirit, messages 
that never vibrate on the outer ear ; he 
may realize a sense of companionship 
which is more intimate and sympathetic 
than that ever experienced when both 
were on earth. This experience comes, 
not through miracle or phenomenon, but 
by means of the spiritual law. Now instead 
of rising from sleep and confronting the 
new day in a state of despondency and 
gloom, one may, instead, rise in newness 
of life. 

"Every day is a fresh beginning; 
Every morn is the world made new." 

Nothing disastrous has happened. All the 
change and the events have been in di- 
vine order. All things are in God's keep- 
ing. If it were not true that the individual 
life — every individual life — could rely 
absolutely on the divine care, then would 
life be meaningless and chaotic and no- 
thing would matter. But that is not true; 
and the more profound and entire is man's 
reliance on this personal aid and sustain- 

[>4 ] 



ing from the divine power, the more he lil 
receives this sustaining; aid. For even the ETE 

o PEACE 

divine power is conditioned, and trust 
creates the atmosphere through which it 
can pass. Even with Jesus, it is said, re- 
garding his sojourn in a certain city, that 
"He did not many mighty works there 
because of their unbelief \" This was in no 
sense an arbitrary refusal on His part to 
do these "mighty works/' but simply the 
impossibility of performing them in an 
atmosphere of unbelief. It was a non- 
conductor of spiritual magnetism. This 
truth holds always in the delicate and sub- 
tle mechanism of spiritual aid. What can 
one man give to another who has no faith 
in him? The lack of faith makes a gulf, 
a vacuum, over which no power of the 
spirit can cross, or through which it can 
pass. Edith Thomas, in her poem called 
"The Barrier/' suggests this invincible, 
yet subtle, power against which no love, 
desire, or sympathy can contend : 

"The gate stood wide, and wide the door, 
As on a thousand nights before, 
And in their wonted threshold tryst 

C 25 ] 



LILIES OF The lamplight and the moonlight kissed. 

ETERNAL The room its welcoming graces wore, 

PEACE ^ s on a thousand nights before; 

The soul of all that mansion bright 
Sent out a voice into the night, 
As on a thousand nights before. 

"Such silken courses stronger are 
Than bolt on bolt, or forged bar, 
More fell than lance of hedging guard, 
Than dragon or the couchant pard; 
For these at length a conqueror know, 
Or opiate draught or steely blow; 
Grown tired of leaguer and delay, 
Love can by might put these away, 
But Love no cunning weapon hath 
To cleave the gossamer's viewless path. 

"The gate stood wide, and wide the door, 
As on a thousand nights before, 
Yet I within can pass no more, 
As on a thousand nights before." 

The invisible barriers are the most im- 
passable of all. So it is faith, trust, belief 
in God and in His aid, that renders it 
possible for the personal aid to be given. 
But let one lift up his heart. Let him re- 
fuse to see the day as one of gloom, or 
loneliness, or desolation, and hail it with 
C *6 3 



gladness as one of unrevealed opportu- lilies of 
nity and privilege. Let him realize that p] 
he, too, is an inhabitant of the spiritual 
universe, and shares, with all humanity, 
the privilege of cooperating with God 
in beneficent work. As a matter of fa6t 
that is the one business of man on earth, 
— to cooperate with the divine power. 
All the a6livities of life — commercial, 
industrial, economic, social, political — 
should be, in their real nature, this co- 
operation w 7 ith the divine power for the 
advancement of humanity. It is not alone 
when one is ministering to the helpless 
that he is cooperating with the purposes 
of God; but also when he is building 
railroads across the continent, carrying 
civilization to new regions, and extend- 
ing the possibilities of homes and of com- 
fort and happy living; when he is navi- 
gating the ocean or the air; when he is 
inventing new mechanism to serve the 
human race; when he is enforcing just 
and wise laws. Every avenue through 
which the forces that make for nobler liv- 
ing may extend themselves is an avenue 
C *7 3 



lilies of through which man may cooperate with 

C T C D AT A T ^ — 

peace God. Realizing this, how can any hours 
be poor or desolate? Every day offers 
new possibilities for the richness of life ; 
and in proportion as one enters into this 
illumination and radiance does he tran- 
scend the limits of the merely mortal life 
and live in the eternal, where those who 
have gone beyond the physical world 
also live. The communion of spirit with 
spirit must come from sharing the con- 
ditions. 

Psychic research has laid its empha- 
sis on the scientific proof of the survival 
of death. These proofs are overwhelm- 
ingly ample and their literature would 
already constitute a very large library. 
" If the proofs of the personal survival of 
death are a delusion, it is the most as- 
tounding one in the world's history/' says 
Dr. Corson of Cornell University; "and 
if it is not a delusion it is impossible to 
predict its future influence on the de- 
stiny of the race. It will revolutionize all 
the philosophies in the world and all its 
systems of education. Through it the soul 

l *8 J 



is lifted and brought into sympathetic re- 
lationship with the soul of things/' 

There is related of Dante this inter- 
esting testimony to the oneness of life 
between the physical and the ethereal 
worlds: 

"The life of Dante was beset with 
strange vicissitudes. His house plundered, 
his writings seized, and himself forced into 
exile. After his death it was evident to his 
friends that he had departed either with- 
out having completed his 'Divina Corn- 
media/ or that some of the cantos were 
lost. Diligent search was made, but with 
no result. A worthy man of Ravenna, 
whose name was Piero Giardino, and who 
had long been Dante's disciple, relates 
that after the eighth month from the day 
of his master's death there came to his 
house before dawn Jacobo Dante, who 
told him that that night his father, Dante, 
had appeared to him clothed in the whitest 
garments, and his face resplendent with 
an extraordinary light; that he, Jacobo, 
asked him if he lived, and that Dante re- 
plied, ' Yes, in the true life, not in our life/ 

C ^9 3 



Then he, Jacobo, asked him if he had 
completed his work before passing into 
the true life ; and if he had done so what 
had become of the part now missing. To 
this Dante seemed to answer, 'Yes, I fin- 
ished it/ and then took him, Jacobo, by 
the hand and led him into the chamber 
in which he, Dante, had slept, and touch- 
ing one of the walls he said, ' What you 
have sought for so much is here;' and at 
these words both Dante and sleep fell 
from Jacobo at once. He sought Piero 
Giardino, and they set out together for the 
room. They lifted a blind fixed to the 
wall and found a little window never be- 
fore seen by any of them. In its recess 
they discovered the lost cantos/' 

The history of the world, from the 
Bible down to the present date, is full of 
these instances of communication between 
those in the Seen and in the Unseen. The 
Catholic literature is filled with it, and 
in Siena and Assisi legend and story are 
invested with local coloring that ren- 
ders them strangely impressive. The life 
of Catherine of Siena and of Francis of 

C 30 3 



Assisi were apparently full of experiences lilii 
of simple, natural intercourse with those : ' NAL 

- - PEACE 

in the Unseen. There can be no question 
but that the spiritual man has powers 
that are far beyond our present know- 
ledge. Dr. Corson has finely said of Jesus 
that his great mission here was not to 
infuse an absolutely new element into 
humanity, but to exhibit and realize to 
the fullest extent in Himself humanity's 
spiritual potentialities. The " other world " 
is not,asKant has said," another place, but 
another view/' The continuity of life is 
unbroken by the change called death, 
and the expansion of religion includes 
the growing recognition of relations of 
spirit which persist beyond the material 
separation. 

Science has undergone an almost com- 
plete revolution during the past thirty 
years. Previous to some time within the 
last quarter of the nineteenth century, all 
matter was held to be composed of atoms 
which were utterly inert and dead. Since 
then has come the discovery of the elec- 
trons that compose it, that are all life and 
C 31 U 



vibration and even intelligence ; and thus 
the scientific view of the universe held 
in the twentieth century differs com- 
pletely from that held in the nineteenth. 
We have now an ele6lrical theory of the 
universe, and it is discovered that all 
phenomena is the result of the vibration 
of electrons. We have learned that the 
range of vibration known to science is 
infinitely beyond the narrow limit per- 
ceptible to the senses, and that there are 
incalculably infinite realms not only, as 
yet, unexplored by science, but far be- 
yond any possible cognition of science 
as known to us at the present time. The 
perception of the senses may, however, 
be continually increased, and the psychic 
perceptions may be increased to a degree 
so vast that to it no known limit may be 
set. As any boundary line is approached 
it recedes, leaving the field of explora- 
tion perpetually enlarging itself. This in- 
creasing apprehension of the ethereal 
forces of the ethereal realm which are 
being so constantly drawn upon to further 
progress, — these forces that furnish light, 



heat, transit, and motor power for a mul- lilies oh 
titude of appliances, — this apprehension 
closely corresponds with enlarging spirit- 
ual apprehension. These forces provide 
for us the explanation of much that would 
otherwise seem phenomenal. Stephen 
Phillips expresses a truth in the lines : 

"I tell you, we are fooled by the eye, the ear: 
These organs muffle us from that real world 
That lies about us." 

The ethereal world is the more real as 
it is the world of causes, while the physi- 
cal is the world of effects. To be recep- 
tive to this higher range is to bring more 
power and more purpose to the shaping 
and development of the present life. 

The poet's insight discovers the subtle 
forces that make for all commercial and 
industrial progress. In his stately and im- 
pressive poem entitled" Midnight, 1900," 
Stephen Phillips w r rites: 

u And the stored strength of the tides ye shall use 
for your labor, 

And bind it to tasks and to toil; 
Yet forget not the beauty of night in her coming 
and going, 

C 33 3 



LILIES OF Forget not the sprinkled vault, 

ETERNAL Nor eve with her floating bird and her lonely star, 

PEACE Nor the reddening clouds of the eve. 

Forget not the moon of the poet, nor stars of the 
dreamer, 

Though ye live like to spirits in ease." 

For the inner power, however, that shall 
express itself in outer achievement the 
poet counsels — 

"Let them look to the inward things, to the search- 
ing of spirit." 

Still further does Mr. Phillips portray the 
new discoveries and inventions: 

" For a man shall set his hand to a handle and wither 
Invisible armies and fleets; 
And a lonelv man with a breath shall exterminate 
armies, 

With a whisper annihilate fleets; 
And soul shall speak unto soul : I weary of tongues ; 

I weary of battle and strife. 
Lo ! I am the binder and knitter together of spirits; 

I dispense with nations and shores. 
• •• 

I will make me a city of gliding and wide-waved 
silence, 

With a highwav of glass and of gold, 
With life of a colored peace and a lucid leisure 
Of smooth, electrical ease; 



C 34 ] 



Of sweet excursions of noiseless and brilliant | ■ l 

travel, ETERNAL 
With room in your streets for the soul." 

Into the forces of the Unseen realm the 
poet penetrates still further: 

"In the years that shall be, ye shall harness the 
Powers of the ether, 

And drive them with reins as a steed. 
Ye shall ride as a Power of the air on a Force that 
is bridled, 

On a saddled Element leap, 
And rays shall be as your coursers and heat as a 
carriage, 

And waves of the ether your wheels, 
And the thunder shall be as a servant, a slave that 
is ready, 

And the lightning as he that waits. 
Ye shall send on your business the blast, and the 
tempest on errands; 

Ye shall use, for your need, Eclipse." 

The higher extension of sight and hear- 
ing are thus foreshadowed: 

"In that day shall a man out of uttermost India 
whisper 

And in England his friend shall hear, 
And a maiden in English sunshine have sight of 
her lover, 

Who wanders in far Cathay. 



c 35 n 



LILIES OF And the dead whom ye loved ye shall walk with, 
ETERNAL and speak with the lost. 

The delusion of Death shall pass. 
The delusion of wounded earth, the apparent with- 
drawal : 

Ye shall shed your bodies and upward flutter to 
freedom." 1 

The truth that the spiritual and the phy- 
sical worlds are in absolute correspon- 
dence, that, although on different planes, 
they exist as parallels, is supported by 
the continual accumulation of evidence 
gained both through scientific advance 
and through a deepening knowledge and 
a wider grasp of spiritual laws. If inter- 
communion between those here and those 
in the Unseen is according to the divine 
laws, it takes its place as one of those 
essential and sacred relationships that ex- 
ist between the spiritual man and God ; 
but however interesting or important the 
question of intercommunication may be, 
it is forever secondary to the supreme im- 
portance of man's relation to the divine 
world. That is the larger question and 

1 From " New Poems " by Stephen Phillips, published by 
John Lane. 

C 36 3 



ETERNAL 
PEACE 



includes the lesser one. One can live all lilii 
through his life on earth without sign or 
token from his beloved in the Unseen if 
it is so decreed by God, for, at the most, 
the separation is only a question of time ; 
but he cannot live without perpetual in- 
tercourse with the Divine Spirit, without 
God's leading and love. 

Yet, as one of the most vital truths in 
all experience, how radiant and wonder- 
ful is the illumination that enfolds and 
glorifies life when one who is most dear 
passes through the portals to that fairer 
world beyond. 

"There is no death! What seems so is 
transition ; 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 
Whose portal we call Death." 

One's entire being is lifted up to the thrill 
of diviner life— even diviner joy — by the 
transition of the friend most dear to that 
"life more abundant/' The real world is 
opened to his sight. There is unlocked in 
his nature new and hitherto undreamed- 
of stores of sympathy, of comprehension, 
C 37 ] 



lilies of and of the significant values of life. He 
peace AL a ^ es himself anew with the divine forces. 

He incorporates into daily experience 
nobler ideals of conduct. Instead of this 
sacred time being one of isolation and 
gloom, let Life put Death away in the 
glorious expansion of new light and love. 
Let one so live that he may be worthy 
to companion his beloved in that purer 
and more lofty life. Through this uplift 
of soul shall the communion of spirit to 
spirit establish itself, never to cease, never 
to know the desolation of separation and 
loss. It shall be, instead, the increasing 
perfection of friendship, of love. The one 
left in the physical realm shall feel, with 
the poet, — 

"Now I can love thee truly, 
For nothing comes between 
The senses and the spirit: 
The Seen and the Unseen." 

Entering on the next phase of life is not 
going into some vague and undreamed- 
of condition of which those here can form 
no comprehension, but into a realm of 
which our own is largely a counterpart, — 
C 38 ] 



a realm of more real experiences, of more 
vital significance, and of higher potencies. 
It may be compared with life here as the 
life of maturity may be compared with 
that of childhood: as an evolutionary — 
not revolutionary — change ; as a deepen- 
ing of significant consciousness; as a con- 
dition where the barriers of space and 
time are transcended and beautiful con- 
ditions focus themselves to encourage and 
develop aspirations and aims unfulfilled 
on earth. It is not disaster or darkness: it 
is all beauty and blessedness and light. 
Shall one not lift up his heart and share 
the gladness? Shall he not so enter into 
the spiritual loveliness of this transition as 
to give his sympathy in the joy to the 
friend in this near realm rather than throw 
on him the weight of his sorrow and de- 
spair ? For that is certainly the gift one may 
make, the service he still may render, 
the happiness he still may contribute to 
that life dearer than his own, — not to 
weigh it down with his sorrow, but rather 
to give his comprehending sympathy in 
its freedom and more fortunate andjovous 
C 39 ] 



lilies of conditions. Through this spiritual sym- 
peace AL P at hy * s ^ e companionship established, 
and through telepathic communion — the 
flashes of spirit to spirit — shall there often 
come definite and recognizable response. 
Of this next condition of our life Phillips 
Brooks well said: 

"Heaven will not be pure stagnation, 
not idleness, not any mere luxurious 
dreaming over the spiritual repose that 
has been safely and forever won; but ac- 
tive, tireless, earnest work ; fresh, live en- 
thusiasm for the high labors which eter- 
nity will offer. These vivid inspirations 
will play through our deep repose, and 
make it more mighty in the service of 
God than any feverish and unsatisfied toil 
of earth has ever been. The sea of glass 
will be mingled with fire/' 

The event of death in a household 
shall draw each one into the more ra- 
diant atmosphere. Each shall enter with 
truer recognition on the life more abun- 
dant, for it shall be a period filled with 
loving service; with the strange sweet 
sense of a new order of companionship; 

Z 40 3 



with a power and exhilaration that re- 
sult from the liberation of undreamed- 

PEACE 

of stores of energy. The change of con- 
dition for the one called away is simply 
one of evolutionary progress. It has come 
to him to-day; it waits for another to- 
morrow. It is not calamity, but opportu- 
nity. The period comes as an interlude 
that may be resplendent in inner beauty, 
in ennobled aspiration, in illumination re- 
vealing the deeper significances of life ; 
and the days may be pervaded by the 
ineffable loveliness of the Lilies of Eter- 
nal Peace. < 



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